Want to Download Scanpst.exe?

The day before leaving for Pubcon, I decided to update my laptop to Outlook 2016 from my antique version 2007. Instantly, upon attempting to open the new Outlook, I was shown this message:

“Cannot start Microsoft Office Outlook. Cannot open the Outlook window. The set of folders cannot be opened. The file c:\Users\Scott\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook\Outlook.pst cannot be opened.”

That’s it. No link, no suggestions, no helpful information, just the bad news.

I tried my old Outlook, and got a different but equally useless error message, telling me that I was screwed.

After remembering that years ago I had used something called the “PST Repair Tool” from Microsoft before, I tried to find and download it, but soon found out that I couldn’t.

This support post at Microsoft told me that it was already on my computer, and tried to explain how to find it. There were dozens of people complaining that it was not found, but all the MS people kept telling them they had to undide their files.

Instead of providing a link to download it, one MS support person actually said “ScanPST is installed all the time and if it doesn’t exist on a given system, it’s because something else has taken place unrelated to the Outlook installation.” Ridiculous.

Despite unhiding my hidden files, no search I performed would find the files on my computer until I started searching individual folders. It wasn’t found from searching “This PC” and all subfolders, nor was it found searching the C drive and subfolders. Finally I searched Program Files (x86) and there thew were. What a colossal waste of time.